


i'm a disease playing victim (slip the fate, slip the victory)

by far2late



Category: Minecraft (Video Game), Video Blogging RPF
Genre: Aftermath of Possession, Aftermath of Violence, Alternate Reality, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Demon Hunters, Angst, Blood and Gore, Blood and Injury, Clay | Dream Needs a Hug (Video Blogging RPF), Crying, Demon Hunters, Demonic Possession, Demons, Demons Made Them Do It, Dreamon, Emotional Manipulation, Ghosts, Guilt, Heavy Angst, Hurt, Hurt Clay | Dream (Video Blogging RPF), Hurt/Comfort, Introspection, Magic, Magical Realism, Manipulation, Mentioned TommyInnit (Video Blogging RPF), Mind Control, Minecraft Realism, Nightmares, Out of Body Experiences, Pandora's Vault Prison, Possession, Psychological Horror, Psychological Trauma, Reality Bending, Rituals, Self-Harm, Some comfort, Supernatural Elements, Survivor Guilt, Sympathetic Clay | Dream (Video Blogging RPF), Torture, Touch-Starved Clay | Dream (Video Blogging RPF), Victim Blaming, Vomiting, Warden Sam | Awesamdude, Waterboarding, Web Series: Tales from the SMP, by the victim, hunters are demon hunters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-07
Updated: 2021-03-07
Packaged: 2021-03-13 03:53:46
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,755
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29895198
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/far2late/pseuds/far2late
Summary: "Dream never accounted for being taken over by this dark source of energy, he had no idea that something like that would have slipped under his radar. Perhaps it was the handsy touch of Helga that had led him to forget the panic that came with something of another world touching him, but the claws that had dug into his mind had little to no pushback from the man.All Dream knew was that one day he had fallen asleep on the roof of the Community House, and after a long, confusing dream that spanned across what felt like years and seconds in the same moment, he awoke to obsidian walls and black sludge seeping from the corners of his mouth."ordream awakens from a possession to obsidian walls and pieces together the rest.
Relationships: Clay | Dream & Sam | Awesamdude, Clay | Dream & Sapnap (Video Blogging RPF), Clay | Dream & TommyInnit (Video Blogging RPF)
Comments: 22
Kudos: 345





	i'm a disease playing victim (slip the fate, slip the victory)

**Author's Note:**

> for added effect, listen to mellohi and saline solution on repeat for the duration of this read

It was a strange sensation, to come back to your body after taking a backseat in everything that had happened for what felt like near years. 

At the same time, Dream could compare it to the feeling of being in a hazy plane of existence. Believing himself to be in something of a dream, ironically, for what felt like years but waking up and feeling like it had only been a few minutes. There was something visceral and new about being able to sit back and let someone else take the lead for him while letting himself sit back and let emotion seep from him slowly. 

Of course, it was easy to let whatever took over him play out what it wanted. His limbs were heavy and aching when he tried to move them of his own accord and his vocal cords were twisted so harshly that it made him want to never speak again. The feeling of gurgling razor blades was a description that came to mind, but it was more accurate to say that he had relinquished free will of his body. 

It was strange. Unnatural. Something that any human would never let happen. Of course, there was probably a bit of appeal in taking over Dream, with what he was. He didn’t know himself, losing his parents a long time before he was able to figure out what they were. All he knew was that magic clung to him like an old jacket and he collected spirits and demons like they were bottle caps and stamps. 

The smell of old weathered paper and whispered past lives followed him for ages. Ever since he was just a child, living off of scraps of raw fish in an old harbour that he never found a way to get away from. It was strange, being so attached to lands he barely knew as his own. He supposed he was glad that he had met Puffy all those years ago, but it was certainly something that he had blamed his strange heritage for. 

Dream knew he had some semblance of control over this demon, the way he had control over lands he put his heart and soul into and the way he could banish the demons and spirits that usually followed him. He couldn’t count the number of times he had to banish a loud, cumbersome spirit named Helga who would insist on running her hands down his chest in a pale imitation of human touch. 

The dead followed Dream and clung onto him, but the evil would dig their claws in and make sure that what they did would stick. 

He knew that he had been the one to let the demon slip past his guard. Over time, he had grown lax about the ghosts and supernatural that haunted his lands. As L’manberg’s history grew more and more bloody he saw more and more citizens of the lands wander on the streets of the Prime path and stand in the fields of the Holy Lands. Dream stopped trying to boot ghosts out of his world when he realized that they had been lost souls looking for a home where there was nothing but the revolutionaries building a home where they once laid. 

He couldn’t put them down for wanting to honour the country they had fought for. Dream just wished that they hadn’t been brought to war in the process. He wasn’t sure what it was about L’Manberg that brought such a visceral reaction to him, but he knew that it was certainly something that made him want to stop it where it started. He had no way of knowing that the place itself held dark energy that infested his soil and trees and crops and sickened the world. Dream knew he needed to stop it in its tracks the moment he found out that it had been something that would have hurt the magic he had spent so long sowing into the woods of the world. 

Dream never accounted for being taken over by this dark source of energy, he had no idea that something like that would have slipped under his radar. Perhaps it was the handsy touch of Helga that had led him to forget the panic that came with something of another world touching him, but the claws that had dug into his mind had little to no pushback from the man. 

All Dream knew was that one day he had fallen asleep on the roof of the Community House, and after a long, confusing dream that spanned across what felt like years and seconds in the same moment, he awoke to obsidian walls and black sludge seeping from the corners of his mouth. 

The man’s eyes widened as he scrambled forward to grasp at the basin of lukewarm water in the cell, mouth opening as he emptied his stomach out into the metal container. He couldn’t stop the bile that dripped from his pointed teeth, coughing as he ejected whatever demon snuck into his body out. Dream’s eyesight blurred as he tried to rid himself of the evil that was nestled into his ribs, ready to fling it out of him when he felt a smidge of its darkened essences in a hidden corner of his mind. 

He didn’t stop panting as he wiped his eyes, looking into the water to see it was black and moving. Dream scrambled back from it, not wanting to look at it any longer. It would take a while for it to disappear in full, he knew that much. He also knew that there was little chance that the demon would completely leave his body unless it was ejected or grew bored. As he examined the state of the cell around him, he could come to a reasonable conclusion on why it might have left his soul either way. 

Dream could feel a chunk of it missing if that was possible. A little part of his consciousness had wilted under the harsh care of the demon that inhabited him. He could feel the ugly essence of pure evil riddling his bloodstream with toxins that he knew would take ages to work out of him. Usually, he would perform this ritual of sorts with Sapnap and George, maybe Bad as well when the reformed demon was around to point out victims of the same sensation of free will being ripped from the person affected. 

Which begged the question— where were George and Sapnap? 

“They must’ve known,” Dream whispered to himself, knees pulled up to his chest as he dug his blunt nails into the side of his legs. “They had to know.”

Something in the pit of his stomach knew they didn’t. Somehow, they didn’t think to question him about his behaviour and didn't go through the same checklist of things they used to before they decided to leave exorcism behind to settle down. Surely they must’ve known that there would be a danger that any one of them could get possessed? Their careers and centred around it for a long, long time before they took breaks so early in their starting years. 

He needed to figure out what he did. He needed to— 

Dream pulled himself up from where he sat, stumbling over to the chest of books and ink and quills. He completely ignored the quills, pulling out the ink bottles and an empty book, thankful for the demon’s oversight in designing the prison. Either that or he was thankful that Sam had the softness of most other rational people and knew that being alone in a cell such as this would drive anyone insane. 

He ripped out pages from the book, not caring to be careful. He didn’t need to be careful and neat for this to work. Once he had gathered at least ten pages, he laid them out in a circle on the floor. It had an outer ring and an inner ring, and even before he dipped his fingers into the inkwell, he could hear static buzzing in his ears. It was constant and just loud enough to bug him, but Dream knew what would come should he complete his little ritual. He didn’t care enough about the consequences of what would happen to let that stop him in his tracks. 

He dipped his thumb and forefinger into the ink, watching it drip off his fingers in slow clumps. Dream cursed under his breath, turning to look at the lava and moving over to hold the inkwell up to the flowing magma. He took several deep breaths as staring into the poisonous waterfall made him feel sick to his stomach. In a hazy way, he could remember the feeling of his hands burning under the white-hot half-liquid. Dream shuddered a bit, shaking his head and closing his eyes. 

After a few minutes, he pulled the ink away from the lava, returning to kneel in front of the circle he made. The static was still infecting his ears, making it harder for him to focus as he dreaded the music that would follow. 

With something of a resigned victory, the ink dripped off his fingers like water the next time he scooped it from the jar. Dream wanted to curse himself for it, but he knew he couldn’t put off what he was dreading. With a deep breath, he etched a Sigil into his left arm and let it glow before the feeling of something warm and living and breathing rushed through his toes up to the tip of his nose. He shuddered, repeating the same symbol on his right arm and feeling the sensation once more. Dream shook his head harshly, ignoring it as the static grew louder, ever-so-slightly more prominent in his ears. 

Dream scooped ink out of another jar, his movements calm and hands steady despite the slow panic building in the pit of his stomach. As his fingers touched the first piece of paper, he could hear the thumping bass of piano notes, muted in the back of his mind. 

The man stopped for a moment, hesitance holding his bones hostage before he shouldered on, ignoring the ache in his muscles as he drew up more Sigils and symbols and words of old onto the pages laid out on the sheets. He was sitting cross-legged amid all of them, eyes flitting around as he continued before pausing at the last sheet to draw upon. It was closest to him, the edges curling up slightly at the dampness that came with humidity. Dream took in a deep breath before etching the last words onto the page. 

Almost immediately, he was thrown out of his body once more. His eyes were blank and he slumped over as though someone had cut a puppet’s strings and his only support was a wooden cross dancing him around. In the— would it be the right wording to call it a spiritual plane? Maybe something else, but where he was there certainly weren’t any ghosts. It was just easier to refer to it as spiritual, as something that had been otherworldly. It was more accurate to call it a deep-dive into his subconscious— spiritual plane, his body was just as it was before he had been possessed. 

Dream felt his face unmarred by scars and not holding the weight of a porcelain mask that felt bound to him by something older than runes and enchantments. He shuddered at the thought before he curled his fingers experimentally. It had been a while since he’d done this. Maybe the last time was the night before the first battle with L’Manberg if one could even call it a fight. It was more like kids playing dress-up that had gotten stupidly reckless. 

One of the last night’s Dream could remember, he contemplated. He hummed for a moment, watching the blank world in front of him shift from white to pitch black, building up monotone buildings in some sort of mock alleyway. It was illuminated at the very end, but Dream felt as though the things around him were all 2-D in whatever plane his consciousness had spawned into. The pure, blank white dropped off into pitch-black only a few steps away from where he stood. 

Dream hesitated before stepping forward. He had gone too far into this ritual to come back with anything but an explanation of what had happened while he had been ripped from himself and injected back into his body like he was the parasite. His hands shook as he crossed the invisible barrier, the white space behind him falling away into pitch black. There was no going back now. 

A familiar tune echoed in the back of his head slowly, haunting him as he tried for a moment to think of what had happened while he was under the demon’s control. It was a murky haze of things that left him more confused than sure of himself, twisting and turning down dark hallways in his mind and nooks and crannies that held dust and secrets and knowledge he didn’t have before. Forbidden entrances in his mind that he knew couldn’t be accessed by normal means. 

Even reaching out something of an imaginary hand to it was something that left him hissing in the physical plane, though he didn’t move. Dream looked down at his right hand to see the voided particles of an End being darkening his fingertips. It sent a jolt of fear down his spine, something visceral as the music in his mind crescendoed at the mere sight of it. He swallowed back panic, searching desperately through his fragmented mind in an attempt to swim through whatever blackened sludge was threatening to overtake his lungs. The crescendoing string instruments of Mellohi grew louder in his ears, and he had to hold back the urge to claw them off completely. 

Dream shuddered as he saw something dark slither in the rubble of what was his mind, slipping through shadows that painted it in contrasting, bright light. It was unsettling, seeing the mark that the demon left upon his being. Somewhere in the depths of it, he knew his memories resided. He simply needed to navigate through the muddled alley his mind became. The demon’s one-track-minded set did wonders for his brain, leaving it near-impossible to see the end of the alleyway his subconscious had drawn up for him to represent his mind. 

Every time he thought he had reached the end, he was greeted with even more junk, piling higher and higher until it reached up to the gray monotone skies that looked as though they had been painted rather than taken from reality. Everything around him felt flat, despite his existence as a person within his mind. 

He stepped in what felt like swamp water, something sending a chill up his spine as he did so. Dream knew he was getting close at that point, a jolt of bittersweet excitement making his hands shake at the tips. His movements became slow as he fought his way through the deepening pit of black sludge. It was inky black, so dark that it held no highlight or shadows, and if he dipped his hand in and pulled it back out, it would slip off his hand like silk. 

The man slipped as he took a step forward and found nothing but a drop under his feet. Dream gasped, cursing under his breath before throwing a hand out to grab anything and finding nothing but air and the crushing feeling of holding the void in the palm of your hand. He fell, plummeting through inky layers of blackness as his lungs grew heavy. Dream felt his mind spin and turn and the music crescendoed, ears ringing more and more as he fell deeper into the pit of black silk water— sand, grain, whatever it was— gasping for air as his lungs slowly compressed and—

He came back to himself with a gasp amid the papers, obsidian walls surrounding him once more. Dream panted for breath, shaking before he felt sick to his stomach and stumbling back to the basin to throw up more. The water had cleared at this point, murky from heat before more black sludge made its way out of his lips. He shook violently as he stumbled away from it, not wanting to look at the mess he had made. 

Dream’s head swung back to the papers spread on the floor, feeling the distinct signature of bad energy among the pages. He almost threw them out before finding them glowing something of a dark violet, the pages lined with words that hadn’t been there before. His eyes widened, scrambling forward to grab at them before they would drift off into the lava somehow. The ten or so pages he laid out were filled from back to front with writing, and the moment he put his hands on the pages, he could feel the same, anxiety-inducing feeling that overtook him when he had carded his fingers through the silk-black liquid in his consciousness. 

He had written his sins out in the same ink the demon had infected his mind with, Dream realized, compiling the papers with shaky hands as they thrummed under his grips. The edges were razor sharp and the cuts they left on his hands smeared the paper with blackened blood, so dark that it was barely crimson anymore. The man took in a shuddering breath, curling up in the farthest corner from the lava and the water in the corner, sitting with his back to the chest that held ink and quills and books in them, staring at the novel that had been written of the demon’s sins. 

Dream would have a long night ahead of him. 

* * *

In another world, Dream was Cornelius and Cornelius lived for much longer than originally planned. He had met the Egg eons ago and made peace with death and murdered alongside the other butler he had been friends with once, long ago. He worked happily with a murderous, bourgeois Piglin hybrid who had made it his goal to be better than the humans they had been surrounded with. A million years ago, centuries ago, decades ago, who knew how long ago. When hybrids were still hunted for their hides and they were treated like the dirt beneath people’s feet. 

In another world, Dream sailed across the seas with his friends and they found a wondrous Netherite sword that was so heavy that neither of them could hold it. In another world, he had been a guest at a banquet where he made friends with a ghost and found himself gravitating to a group of three, sometimes four, that was oddly familiar. 

Sometimes, in nightmares, Dream would find himself haunted by these different glimpses of reality, overtaking his mind and leaving him to awaken feeling more tired than when he had first gone to bed. It was almost as though he had lived through that night in person rather than viewing it from an out-of-body perspective. It certainly felt weird, especially when he had ended them off with a view of something so bright and white that he could hardly recognize it anymore. 

Recently, though, Dream had nightmares of a completely different calibre. 

He was constantly haunted by the visions of things he had done under the demon’s control. It was as if stepping into his consciousness and finding out the truth about what had happened had driven him to the point to stop blocking off what he had done. That and the pages that he had taken from his consciousness to the physical plane seemed to have been dipped in the black sludge that he was pretty sure was cursed. 

Dream never really knew where nightmares began and ended, nor could he tell them apart from the hallucinations that plagued him in his cell. He was sure that the demon would have been able to handle being stuck in solitary for so long, but the feeling of being touch-starved was catching up on the man from the months he had spent pushing everyone away from him physically. He missed George and Sapnap and Karl and Quackity and their gentle affections and their roughhousing but he couldn’t explain this mess to them without looking as though he was scapegoating for a way out of the situation that he was stuck in. 

That and how Sam didn’t check up on him anymore. The demon had spent at least two or three weeks in his body after he had been thrown in the prison as if to worsen the case for him before he decided to leave him to rot in the obsidian cell. It was as though the creature was complex enough to realize the amount of damage it could cause even after it left him as a vessel. Dream supposed that it wasn’t too much of a stretch, considering how it had tackled everything else. It was a convoluted spider web of events that branched out farther and farther until Dream could barely track it back to where it was supposed to start and end. 

The nightmares that haunted him were enough to have him wake up screaming, the man waking up and clawing at himself in such a violent way that it would tear chunks from his skin. Dream had blood under his fingernails more often than not, something that he would grow used to over the weeks he had spent in the prison. Most days he felt more dead than alive in the obsidian box. It was almost a relief to have the hallucinations show up around him, unable to deal with the constant silence that buzzed in the back of his head. 

He almost sobbed as he opened his eyes and found himself staring back at Tommy, the teen’s clothes torn up and ragged as his eyes had large bags under them. The teen was staring up at him with large, doleful eyes that looked duller than they did sky blue. Dream could feel the hazy corners of his vision turn white and foggy, as though he was just a viewer in the story. He had no control over his limbs and his voice was taken from him as he was forced into the nightmare that was what the demon had made him do. 

_ “Are any of them coming to my party, do you think?”  _ Dream inwardly cringed at the roughness of his voice, though his physical self didn’t comment on it. Instead, he felt his shoulders rise and fall in a quick shrug, the demon still somehow out of place in a human body despite the months he spent familiarizing himself with Dream’s. It felt evil, looking back on a memory like this as though he was the one committing the crime. It was wrong, despicable, made him want to cry and scream as he yelled and screamed until his voice went raw only for nothing to come from it. 

_ “I don’t think so, Tommy. I’m sorry.”  _ He wanted to hurt something, just hearing his vocal cords be twisted around the demon’s tongue as though they were his to command. The Tommy in his nightmare wilted, shoulders slumping down. Dream wished he could break out from the creature’s control just for a moment, even if it was only a memory, and somehow comfort Tommy. He didn’t deserve to be broken down into nothing, not at all. He was the last person to ever deserve something like that. 

Tommy was strong and brave and loud and annoying in a funny way that made Dream hopelessly endeared to the boy. He brought out such protective instincts in Dream that it nearly made him fight Wilbur to the death for his safety, despite how he had ended up killing him of his own free will. To even imagine himself saying these things to him and driving him into taking his own life was something despicable. Evil and wrong and disgusting. 

The scene around him shifted, and suddenly, he was on the Nether bridge as Tommy leaned over. Dream felt something lucid slip into his limbs as he watched him lean closer and closer to tipping over the edge, until his hand jolted out in a violent movement that Dream hadn’t accounted for, smacking Tommy away from the edge. The teen looked at him, and Dream nearly cried as he opened his mouth and was able to speak for the first time in what felt like years. 

_ “It’s not your time to die yet, Tommy.”  _ The words came out monotone and dull but he was so, so glad he was able to force the words out before the ability to speak left him completely. Almost a moment later, the same sensation of the demon seeping its claws into his bones returned and his body was yanked away from the edge, walking over the Nether bridge and making his way back to Tommy’s spot of exile. Never in his life had Dream wanted to jump into lava so badly until it was at that very moment. 

With a gasp, he awoke in the obsidian walls once more, nearly tipping over and falling in the process. He was far too light, lighter than he remembered being during the L’Manberg war. Dream was pretty sure that the demon that had inhabited his body had forgotten to feed him normally, only living off the endless Golden Apples he had. The man wished that he had been able to retain anything from when the thing had taken over him, but it was as though everything about him he had once valued was ripped from him. 

Even his face, at this point. Dream had made the mask so long ago, his sister giving him the template for it ages ago after a school project. He remembered scribbling on it as a thirteen-year-old, showing it to Sapnap— then Pandas rather than the name he held now— and bragging about how mysterious he was. The child had stolen a bit of his ripped shirt after tearing at it with his claws, tying his hair back with it as though it were a hair tie before being satisfied. George hadn’t yet joined their merry group, so he wasn’t in the fond memory, but the goggles he wore were familiar enough to him. 

For a moment, he was a teenager again, sixteen and new to the world and Sam was a trusted friend who he could rely on for almost anything. The man’s name was on his lips, on the brink of being yelled out before he shook his head, letting himself fall back into the black stone once more. Dream’s hair fell against crying obsidian, clumping together in the purple liquid as he screwed his eyes shut. 

It would be easy, just to give up. To let himself fall into lava and eat at his bones the way his sins ate at his heart, but he was selfish. Dream was selfish and he didn’t want to die with Sapnap thinking that he had been the one to destroy their first home, for Tommy to think he had hurt him so badly, for George to think he hated him, for Puffy, oh, for  _ Puffy  _ to think he was something that should have never happened to her. 

He was so tired, Dream wanted nothing more than to sleep in her arms and let himself cry his eyes out into her shoulder and be held and feel the warmth of someone who still cared for him. He took in a shuddering breath, eyes half-open as he called out for help that would never come once more. 

* * *

Dream ate potatoes. He ate raw potatoes that would stick to his molars and under his tongue and coat his tastebuds with the rotting taste of bad vegetables. He would taste dirt between his canines and he would throw up from eating them raw after a while. 

He deserved as much, really. It was hard to remember that he wasn’t the one to hurt the server, sometimes. It was hard to remember that the demon that had puppeteered him never cared for him and was always there, had been there since L’Manberg’s first world. It was so much easier to give into hallucinations and be yelled at by imaginary Sam’s and Sapnap’s and George’s and Puffy’s and Tommy’s and Wilbur’s, be beaten by nightmarish Technoblade’s and Phil’s and people who never cared for him. 

Being chewed up and spit back at the world he cared for so much was so much more comforting than accepting the fact that he hadn’t been responsible for what happened. That Dream wasn’t strong enough to protect those he cared about. 

Raw potatoes plagued his senses and he wished for nothing more than a hand to hold that wasn’t molten stone and a fiery abyss of nothingness. 

* * *

Sometimes it was comforting to fall back into old familiar spells that would leave him enchanted with a remembrance of places that he had visited years ago. Rain would drift in and out of his senses, the familiar smell something that he would treasure. His hands would run over an imaginary coat that had been warm, fluff in the hood that he would pull up and fabric running down to his mid-thighs before it cut off. Dream could pretend that the humidity came from storms rather than lava. 

He could hear laughter echoing in his head, sometimes. Not the malicious type of the demon that inhabited him, but far away echoes that would remind him of the trip across the world that he, Sapnap, and George had taken a million years ago. When their faces were still soft with youth and the Community House was a dream so far away from anything they had planned. When Bad had still been sane and he hadn’t faded from red to white. 

Dream closed his eyes, nails scratching at the insides of his arms as blood ran down his arms and pretended that he was on a bus as he rocked himself back and forth in the cell, gray blurs passing by in a palette of buildings rather than blurred vision mixing glowstone and black walls together. It was easy to let everything fall away. 

Dream had never been one to take the easy way out of anything, though. And he was cursed with that once he had found himself with his first contact with someone tangible since he had been released from the silk smooth grip of the demon’s puppet strings. 

* * *

Dream watched with blank eyes as lava slowly flowed down from the ceiling of the room around the cell, seeing just how many layers were around the maximum-security cell he was being held in. It frightened him almost as much as the sight of his old friend standing on the bridge against him did. 

He hadn’t seen Sam in a long, long time now, only through hazy memories he barely could keep track of. Dream had read his name countless times over the glowing pages he had found that explained everything that had happened, seeing how he had asked for the prison to be built by him. In some way, it was because of Sam he was free of the demon in the first place. In other ways, he wished that he could take away the burden of being Warden from the man’s shoulders. 

Seeing him frightened him, though. 

The thought of trying to explain what had happened to him was something terrifying that he never thought he would have to deal with before. Dream certainly wasn’t expecting his confrontation to come anywhere near this soon despite how he had been trying to prepare himself for it. Dream shuffled back as he saw the man stride forward confidently on the bridge. It looked as though he was mad, with the way his shoulders were raised and he held a trident in his hands with what looked like a tight grip. 

Dream pressed himself against the wall behind him, as though he would disappear the moment he touched the wall in just the right spot, melting into obsidian. In any other situation, seeing the man would have been a relief. Now, it was just something that proved to terrify him more than anything. Especially with the lack of knowledge of the situation on Sam’s end. 

As the bridge connected with the obsidian, Dream shifted under the weight of Sam’s glare on him, feeling his eyes burning through the goggles he wore to cover his eyes from view. It made him look more creeper than anything but also served to terrify Dream. The man had half-a-mind to pull the mask off of his face just to make it easier on him with the removal of the oppressive weight of porcelain against his cheeks, but it was also horrifying to imagine bringing himself to such a vulnerable state when he was already weak. 

“Dream.” The man’s voice was cold, the Netherite blocks shifting down as he spoke. Dream almost flinched back, swallowing back the bile in his throat before turning to face him properly. He was curled into something of a ball, his hands wrapped around his ankles tightly, finding something strangely gratifying about the feeling of his palms wrapped around warm skin. 

“...Sam,” He answered, voice impossibly soft and shaky. It made the creeper hybrid stop in his tracks for just a moment, though his resolve quickly hardened. The words that were desperate to fall from Dream’s mouth were stopped as Sam leaned down and grabbed at his chin with one hand, yanking him forward as he kneeled in front of him. Dream gasped slightly at the feeling of warm touch on his lukewarm, sometimes cold skin. It felt heavenly and too much at the same time. 

“Don’t try these tricks with me. We both know why I’m here,” Sam snarled. His gas mask and goggles blocked off almost all the expressions on his face, leaving Dream more terrified than not. He didn’t struggle too much as the man grabbed at him and cuffed his arms, terrified to explain what had happened. It wasn’t even something that would get him in trouble, in theory. Sam knew the symptoms of possession just as much as he did, and he knew that an explanation would help, but at the same time— 

He deserved punishment. Maybe after whatever Sam had planned, he would admit what had happened. Dream just needed a reminder that he could feel something, a fucked up lesson in pain that he had been floating by since he had been taken over by the demonic entity. 

His hands were cuffed in front of him, and he let them fall in his lap as he sat down on his knees. In any other case, his thighs would cushion, but his too-thin legs leave them looking sad and small against black floors. The sight made Dream want to throw up, strangely. It’s hard to imagine hurting anyone in a body like this. Hard to imagine hurting anyone at all, but his ears rang with explosions and his cell reeked of blood and Sam stood above him with an axe and the air of an executioner. 

“What’s— Remind me what this is, Sam,” Dream asked, his mouth dry. The man doesn’t answer for a moment, and visceral, self-satisfying fear fills him for a moment. Dream feels fucked up for it, in a way. Like he’s taking advantage of a man that doesn’t know what he’s doing. Doesn’t know he’s hurting Dream after being ripped away from his mind and free will for what felt like ages. 

(Even now, breathing was strange for him. The conscious feeling of curling his fists in and out of a clenched shape. Tapping his fingers against the ground. Ink dripping from them and being able to feel the sensations of hot and cold and too much and too little. Feeling hunger and longing and emotions that had been so long muted. It was strange, strange, strange. Alien despite him being a human, quiet despite him being so naturally loud. Dream wondered if he’d ever been the same again.) 

“Retribution,” Sam said, and the words sounded so wrong in the gentle man’s mouth that it made Dream want to hurt himself more for what he had done. “For what you did to everyone else. You’re a lot more talkative than usual, is there a reason for that?” 

The question was meant to be rhetorical, but Dream chuckled at it in an odd, choked-off way. As though he wasn’t used to this body. In honesty, he isn’t. He isn’t sure how much became the demon’s and how much is still his. 

“Later,” He promised, the words feeling empty. Black tendrils of an ugly feeling curled around his ribs and Dream ignored it as Sam hefted up his axe, setting it to the side before pulling out something else from his pack that he kept so close to him. Dream wished he could focus on it more but his eyes wandered, vision blurring and focus shifting as it often did in the prison. 

Dream flinched as he felt something cold pour over his hands, looking down at them to find the sizzle of lava and magma eat away at his fingers. The disconnect from his body and his hands left him staring at them with something of a blank gaze, mouth only just hanging open. 

“Oh,” He said dumbly. “Oh.” 

Sam didn’t react to the words, kicking the empty bottle away and letting the thermos fall into the curtain of lava that blocked him off from the rest of the world. He didn’t think the metal container would survive another use, and he let himself be yanked around uselessly as the man curled a fist into his hair. 

It would be nice to say that the retribution he deserved was something artful. That it was something aesthetic that had made him remember he was alive and well and that Sam was another God in his world. 

It was awkward. Awkward and quiet and the only sounds were his coughs as he was waterboarded. Sam panted as well, though his gasping breaths were more out of anger and upset and hurt and rage that he didn’t know how to deal with. Dream stayed disconnected as his fingers were cut at, as his lungs were flooded with water, as his arms were examined before the cuts were cleaned with saltwater. Little things that made his time in the prison worth it, in Sam's and Dream's eyes. 

He sputtered as the water was poured over the cloth on his face, breathing in the drenched cloth as though it would help and finding himself nearly drowning above land. Dream shook his head weakly, trying to get away from the hands that grabbed at him and forced the cloth over his nose and mouth until all he could taste was blood and grime and lukewarm water. 

He shuddered against the hard grip, being shoved back so hard that his head slammed against the wall behind him, The cuffs were unlocked from around his arms and he could feel himself shake as Dream stretched his legs out in front of him, arms dead-weight next to him. 

Dream let himself slump back against the wall, eyes half-open as Sam stepped back, admiring his handiwork. He nearly forgot the promise he made with the Warden before he was nudged with a steel-toed boot, blinking up at him as the glare of the lava made it hard for him to stare. 

“What was it you were going to tell me?” He asked. Dream couldn’t stop himself from barking out a laugh, a strangled one that sounded choked and wrong and not at all like him. He laughed as he took the mask off his face and he laughed as Sam sucked in a breath at the blackened sclera of his eyes and the neon green pupils. He laughed as the man shoved his mouth open and shone a light down it to find the tell-tale blackened brand of a soul claimed by a demon. 

He laughed until he cried and Sam held him and cried as well, the blackened tips of Dream’s fingers trembling as his tears turned black and his chuckles turned to sobs and his mask was thrown to the side. 

Dream laughed and laughed and laughed and cried blood until he thought he could do nothing else. 

**Author's Note:**

> this is probably the only sympathetic dream fic i will ever write bc as a concept, i despise the dreamon theory in canon. this is before tommy ever gets trapped in the prison, and after sapnap and bad visit. hope u enjoyed i guess lol
> 
> lmk if u want to see a recovery thing where there is much more introspection <3 hope u enjoyed and tell me what u thought! ++ leave suggestions for possible recovery chapter 
> 
> also please tell me if i forgot to tag anything triggering thank u


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